«In 2024 in Italy it is not possible to guarantee continuous access to essential drugs for the treatment of tuberculosis»: this is the complaint to AIFA and the Ministry of Health by Stop-TB Italia and various national scientific societies.
Tuberculosis, a contagious bacterial infectious disease, is one of the main causes of death in the world with more than one million deaths and more than ten million cases of disease per year.
In Italy in 2021 it was diagnosed in almost 2,500 people, some of them with severe forms resulting from diagnostic delays associated with the Covid-19 pandemic.
The contagious nature requires early identification and timely initiation of therapy in order to avoid transmission to susceptible individuals.
For several years, specialists have been facing enormous difficulties in obtaining very cheap drugs such as rifampicin and pyrazinamide. This deficiency can lead to an interruption of therapy, with the risk of inducing resistance to antibiotics and contagion of healthy people. Importing medicines from abroad has a high cost.
The situation is even more dramatic for children, following the lack of pediatric formulations and the use of those for adults with the risk of toxicity and reduced efficacy.
Furthermore, access to new drugs reserved for antibiotic-resistant forms of disease and for tuberculosis infection is difficult and expensive.
